Flying Qualities of Small General Aviation Airplanes. Part 2. The Influence of Roll Control Sensitivity, Roll Damping, Dutch-Roll Excitation, and Spiral Stability

摘要

As the second phase of a study of flight characteristics criteria for small general aviation aircraft, experiments were conducted with a variable stability flying simulator to determine the influence of roll mode time constant, roll control sensitivity, and Dutch roll mode excitation due to lateral maneuvering in the landing approach; and spiral stability in IFR climb and cruise. The approach piloting task consisted of an ILS portion followed by a visual runway lineup maneuver requiring a 25 deg heading change. Conclusions are drawn with respect to optimum and minimum acceptable levels for roll mode time constant, roll control sensitivity and control power, and Dutch roll excitation parameters. The spiral tests indicate that although a moderate level of spiral stability aids heading tracking, the turbulence response of the airplane is likely to be excessive is this characteristic is obtained by aerodynamic means such as large dihedral. Where possible, the results are compared with requirements for piloted military airplanes. (Author)